Want to live to 90?

May 5, 2014

(Credit: CBS)

A landmark study of retirement community residents who lived past 90 is providing a guide that could help.

They’re called “the oldest old.” They are people age 90 and above, and they are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. Now a landmark study of thousands of members of a retirement community in Southern California is revealing factors that may contribute to living longer. Some of the findings are no surprise — smoking led to shorter lifespans, while those who exercised lived longer. Other findings were unexpected — vitamins did not prolong life, but carrying some extra weight did.

Lesley Stahl went to Laguna Woods, Calif., to report on this study and its remarkably spry subjects for 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 4 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Dr. Claudia Kawas of the University of California, Irvine, found the research equivalent of a gold mine when she discovered that 14,000 residents of a retirement community formerly known as “Leisure World” (now Laguna Woods) had filled out detailed questionnaires about their diet, activities, vitamin intake, and medical history back in the early 1980s. With $6 million from the National Institutes of Health, she and her staff took those 14,000 files and began a research project called “90+.” Who had died and when? Who was still alive and over 90? They were able to locate and sign up 1,600 of those 90-plussers, as they call them, many still living at Laguna Woods. Each is examined physically and cognitively every six months.

“People who exercised definitely lived longer than people who didn’t exercise. As little as 15 minutes a day on average made a difference,” says Dr. Kawas. Keeping active in non-physical ways, such as socializing, playing board games, and attending book clubs, also was associated with longer life. “For every hour you spent doing activities in 1981, you increased your longevity, and the benefit of those things never leveled off,” she tells Stahl.

Kawas tells Stahl that being obese at any age is unhealthy. However, she found that older people who were moderately overweight or average weight lived longer than people who were underweight. “It’s not good to be skinny when you’re old,” Dr. Kawas says.

Vitamins didn’t seem to affect longevity, but alcohol intake did, with people who drank up to two drinks per day having a 10-15 percent reduced risk of death compared to non-drinkers. “A lot of people like to say it’s only red wine. In our hands it didn’t seem to matter,” says Dr. Kawas.

One of the biggest surprises so far in the study is that 40 percent of the time, what seemed to be Alzheimer’s disease in people over 90 actually wasn’t. The researchers learned this by studying the brains of the subjects after death; many showed evidence of microscopic strokes. Kawas says she hasn’t yet figured out what caused the strokes, so she can’t say how to prevent them. She tells Stahl, “I wish I did. But I will soon, I hope.”

clovely65, you are wrong. It is wrong to believe that our lifespan is limited.
No one cell older than 7 years could be found in a men body, and older than 5 years in a female body. Aging is connected with the process of accumulation of mistakes during lifespan, and this process could be slow down, or even reversed by positive self motivation. That motivation should be aimed on a result expected after long time period, 15-21 years.
The right way to express own age is in stating that only such age was reached. For example my mom get habit to say that she is only 93 years old.
To make the long story short, that is simple and powerful way to improve the quality of own life, regardless of existing conditions.
Every one, who will state that only such age is reached up to present time, will feel much better right away.

Aspirin, a regular bit of wine, eat well, exercise, never stop being curious and learning …. all found to correlate to longevity at some point. Maybe the secret to living longer is to not stop _living_.

Micro- or mini-strokes are called transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) and are serious things. They are often unnoticeable, unless they hit a part of the brain that involves speech or motor control .. but they are not good anywhere. That’s what 81mg aspirin is for with the elderly …